INNOVATORS Gold Award - New Orleans City Business
INNOVATORS Gold Award - New Orleans City Business
INNOVATORS Gold Award - New Orleans City Business
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INNOVATOR<br />
M.S. Rau Antiques<br />
Key innovation: using a customer relations marketing<br />
software to manage and match inventory and clients<br />
Where they’re based: <strong>New</strong> <strong>Orleans</strong><br />
Top executive: Bill Rau, president and CEO<br />
Year introduced: 2004<br />
2007 sales: $51 million<br />
PHOTO BY FRANK AYMAMI<br />
THE ROMANCE BETWEEN 96-year-old M.S. Rau<br />
Antiques and a hot, young software program called Pivotal<br />
CRM has given birth to $50 million-plus revenues post-<br />
Hurricane Katrina when other businesses have struggled.<br />
Although he’s a third-generation owner of the largest<br />
volume antique dealer in the nation, a business steeped in<br />
history and tradition, Bill Rau never stops looking forward<br />
and investing in technology to streamline business<br />
operations.<br />
“I remember when my father would sell something, he<br />
would scratch it out of the books,” said Rau, who recalls<br />
installing the company’s first computer system around 1991.<br />
Several years ago, Rau invested in a customer relations<br />
marketing software program. Because it lacked capabilities<br />
specific to the antiques business, it was disappointingly<br />
nothing more than a glorified telephone directory,<br />
he said. In 2004, Rau discovered the Pivotal CRM and<br />
had it customized by St. Louis-based Maverick<br />
Technologies to support M.S. Rau’s needs.<br />
“From a retail standpoint, we’re very unique because every<br />
single item is unique,” Rau said. “To cross-sell effectively and<br />
make sales data meaningful, we need to carefully group and<br />
categorize products by type, style, era and so forth.”<br />
M.S. Rau’s thousands of antiques are catalogued and<br />
available for the company’s catalogs and Web site. The system<br />
is updated every time an item is sold. Additionally, the<br />
dealer’s numerous clients are catalogued with personal<br />
preferences, buying habits, wish lists and even special occasions<br />
such as birthdays and anniversaries.<br />
“Before, we would buy things and hope they matched<br />
what people wanted,” Rau said. “Now, we very much use<br />
technology to try and figure out what we should be buying<br />
instead of going by the seat of our pants.”<br />
The new system was just getting its legs when Katrina<br />
hit. Nancy Kuo, information technology director who<br />
had only been on the job two months, retrieved all of the<br />
Pivotal CRM data before evacuating and ran systems<br />
from a host company in Dallas. Through this arrangement,<br />
Rau was able to contact customers. He sent an e-<br />
mail, reporting on the status of employees, the business<br />
and <strong>New</strong> <strong>Orleans</strong> as information unfolded.<br />
“The customer communication we were able to do<br />
through Pivotal CRM kept M.S. Rau Antiques alive,”<br />
Kuo said.<br />
When it became clear <strong>New</strong> <strong>Orleans</strong> wouldn’t rebound<br />
that quickly, the new software allowed M.S. Rau to tap<br />
into a much bigger, virtual market than what would have<br />
walked through the doors on Royal Street.<br />
“Walk-ins used to account for 60 percent of our business,”<br />
said Chief Financial Officer Scott Ferguson. “Now<br />
roughly 70 percent of our business is done online<br />
through Pivotal CRM.”•<br />
— Angelle Bergeron<br />
M.S. Rau Antiques salesman Phillip Youngberg, right, shows a Tiffany silver flatware set to customers Dorothy Guthrie, left, and Ann<br />
Calhoun.<br />
<strong>New</strong> <strong>Orleans</strong> <strong>City</strong><strong>Business</strong> 25A